Archives for posts with tag: If I didn’t have you

This is Dedicated…

December 4, 2020 //

…To the one(s) I love (right now)… 🙂

It’s my Traveling Partner’s birthday, today. It’s been my great good fortune, now, to share his birthday with him for 10 of them. Wow. Quite a bit of time together. It’s gone by rather quickly. 😀

I find it sometimes a bit challenging to find gifts that will suit his taste, and his current activities and interests. Sometimes costs put a neat idea quite out of reach. This year, the real challenge is that we both have what we need, and we’re together; everything else feels “extra”. I did find a couple gift-worthy items that I hope he likes, and I definitely “went for it” with the cake and ice cream. lol My time, my presence – that, too. I’m taking half a day off to enjoy with him. 😀

I slept like crap last night. I mean… I woke an hour or so after I went to bed, and couldn’t fall back to sleep until sometime well after midnight. The sleep I got was fine. I’m tired and in pain, though. I’d like to feel young and fit and thoroughly joyful today, for sure. Gotta make do with this mortal form and all the challenges that go with that – and avoid taking any of it at all personally. Aging? Yeah – totally impersonal. lol

So… looks like today will balance genuine joy and celebration, and the precious gift of our limited mortal time together – balanced with the unfortunate truths of aches, pains, and mortality itself. lol Still – this human traveling sharing life’s journey with me? Now that’s a life worth celebrating. 😀 Certainly my life would be very different today if I were without his companionship and love.

…Don’t forget to tell those special human beings in your life how special they are.

Tags begin again, happy birthday to you, If I didn't have you, joy and celebration, life in the time of pandemic, love letter, Moments, pain and pain management, pandemic life, this is dedicated (to the one I love), you say it's your birthday

Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Big 5

This is Real, This is Mine

October 16, 2015 //

I’m not bragging – I’m just saying, this is a lovely moment right here, and it’s authentic, and warm, and it is built on the choices I have made in life, and in the recent moments just concluded; it’s mine and I get to keep it. It is my experiences that are my measure of wealth – and self – and they can’t be faked or stolen. I am.

I am floating, uplifted, and for the moment utterly transcendent. I fucking love Love. Just dinner out and a drive through the countryside with my traveling partner’s masterful hand at the wheel, laughing and talking and singing along with a favorite song together. It wasn’t an exotic or expensive night out; we don’t need it like that to feel loved and cared for in each other’s arms. Great conversation built this relationship we share, and great conversation – intimate, vulnerable, connected, open and real – is what sustains it. I have never loved like this, so deeply, so easily – and we’re not even talking about the sex. By comparison, the sex almost doesn’t matter – and if you knew me ‘in the flesh’ (lol) you would know how significant it is that these words come from me. We are just so right together. Even when we fail – we win. Tonight was all win and good.

This isn’t about good moods or bad moods – and I’m in a lot of pain this evening. I’m tired from the long fairly intense week at work. I’m feeling the ups and downs of acknowledging the pain and fatigue, mingling with the eagerness to see the dawn for a weekend trip to the coast, and this fully saturated feeling of love and connection. I’m not crazy and I’m not making excuses – I feel. I feel a lot, and I feel pretty intensely, and I’m not always sure this fragile vessel can hold the contents of my heart in some moment or another – and I’m okay. This, right here, feels like an ‘everything is going to be okay’ moment on some other level… Is it ‘just’ the love, ‘just’ the connection…or is it absolutely and entirely always about the love, always about the connection – on some level, with some soul (even if my own, with myself)?

My life could use more hugs and more eye contact, more cuddling, and more connection. That may easily be the most true thing I have ever put into words about life. Any life. Tonight I am smiling. I am grateful. I am loved. Love doesn’t need me to wait around for it, either; there is a wide world on the other side of my door, and it is filled with people who love, and yearn to be loved in return. Have you ever had that experience when the day is difficult, but some unexpected conversation with a stranger turns it around? I definitely want to have more of those. lol

I’m just saying – lonely is a thing, and there are practices for that, too. If I could just stand right here in life, feeling wrapped in love, secure, satisfied, content – motionless in this moment – I might not need to understand loneliness. I am so human… I am amused, for the moment, that some things about loneliness seem more obvious from this entirely different and not at all lonely perspective. Is that strange? When I feel loved, I am more able to love. There’s a lesson there. I will contemplate it tomorrow as I walk the beach, a solitary figure – alone, but not lonely, and very much loved.

Be love.

I am rambling, and disrupted – but not in a bad way. I am moved. 🙂

Tags All of Me, all the feelings, be love, Best of What's Around, Counting Stars, Crash into me, Dancing Nancies, Happy, I am not the sum of my issues, If I didn't have you, love songs, Moves Like Jagger, Not Perfect, ptsd, right down the line, Sex-o-Matic Venus Freak, Spaceman, TBI, tbi and love, where are you going?

Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Cherry Blossoms

May 1, 2013 //

“Cherry Blossoms” 2011

Love.

I don’t know what exactly to say right now. I’m happy to know love. (I’m incredibly fortunate to enjoy the love of multiple partners.) There have been times in the past, other lives, other ‘loves’, when I thought I understood…thought I was, in the moment, experiencing love…or Love…or … maybe not. Usually not. I was cynical about love in my twenties; it had no reality for me, and I was damaged and numb. In my 30s, I was disappointed, disillusioned, and angry about love, or rather the lack of it. I found love the first time in my 30s, actually, and the love I found was pure Greek tragedy, with no possible future to it in the world I lived in…in didn’t help matters that I was so consumed by personal shame, regret, and long-time self-loathing that I couldn’t possibly have understood or enjoyed love, or treated someone else’s heart well, at that point in my life. I tried solitude, and found that libido would overrule my best efforts at good decision making for myself again and again – because I knew nothing about taking care of myself, or my own heart; I knew only that experiencing a physical need could be gratified by a physical action. Very mammalian. Very primate. Pretty far removed from love.

Those earlier attempts to love, and accept love in return, hurt everyone involved at some point, on some level, and I doubt I’ve yet learned not to hurt people with my novice efforts at love. Still…there came a day when love found me, reached me through my walls and mirrors, touched me and demanded my attention in spite of my pain and my baggage and my cynical jokes about love – and I was blown away. I still am. There’s no forcing it, either, love is what it is, and there’s an ebb and flow to those powerful emotions of connection, romance, passionate affection, and heart…and I am very much aware of how little I know, yet, about love.

Why am I writing about love? Because love demands my attention today, and I am celebrating an anniversary of love – two years ago today, one of my partners and I chose to underscore our romantic attraction, our affection, our enjoyment of each other, our shared life together…by signing a contract. lol. 🙂 No regrets here, either. I could say something syrupy about ‘couldn’t be happier’ or go overboard with the hyperbole…but life is very real, and loving someone with my issues – or his – has its complicated moments. Damn though… I love him with my whole heart and no reservations. I don’t know what more I could say about that – I am motivated to grow and become and thrive, largely on the basis of knowing love. Any love. Real love. It’s…indescribable at heart. I paint instead. “Cherry Blossoms” was painted to celebrate love. So was this…

“Communion” 2010

I’ve painted about 2 dozen canvases inspired by love – this love, this man, this time in my life. I don’t know where life will take me, or us, or the world. Love isn’t always easy…but so far, it is always worth living the experience of loving and being loved in return. I don’t expect perfect 24/7 bliss from love…I hope I enjoy it for a long while to come…I am enjoying it in my now. Happy Anniversary, Love. ❤

“X-Rated” kissed by rain drops. Love, too, sometimes feels the weight of tears on tenderness.

…And yes, practicing mindfulness seems to have value for love, too. 🙂 I am learning that many of the everyday moments of distress or misunderstanding, the sorrow or anxiety in the sleepless wee hours of a lonely night, the hormonal fury that sometimes still takes me over, all benefit from mindful moments and taking good care of my own heart…because when I do not find love for myself, within my own heart, I lose my way and struggle feel the love offered by others.

Time to listen to love songs…it’s so hard not to post links to each and every one on my lover’s Facebook wall. lmao

Tags crazy bitch, dreams of love, happy anniversary, If I didn't have you, Love love me do, loving you is easy, ps I love you

Categories Art, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Roses, Spring, Uncategorized, Words